Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

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willpell
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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by willpell » Thu Dec 04, 2014 2:35 pm

Amara wrote:Wait, is content from Magic of Incarnum okay, then?
(Since I actually have the physical book sitting in front of me right now...)
I have certain problems with the fluff of the book, and one or two of its things are possibly broken, but in general I tend to like it. Although part of the reason I thought I'd get Aegis into it was that nobody else was doing it, so if you want to jump in too, it might qualify as stealing some of his thunder, and I might steer him in a different direction.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by Amara » Thu Dec 04, 2014 2:39 pm

Oh no no, that's quite fine. I simply like some of the races. (Moreso than the classes, even though the races were designed with the new classes in mind.)

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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by willpell » Thu Dec 04, 2014 2:51 pm

I've refluffed most of the races a bit; "Azurins" are now called Soulborn (I'm not sure what Soulborn are now called, but since it's unlikely anyone wants to play one, I doubt it matters), and they are explicitly just humans with atypically strong souls which make them grow up faster and die younger. They don't have blue eyes, they are allowed to be True Neutral, and they're not considered a separate race in setting terms; to anyone but the very few Incarnum experts, they're not different from humanity in general in any way that would cause them to be identified as a group.

Dusklings are pretty much the same as ever, though I call them Bubasti; Skarns are also renamed as the Ni Shaan, and have a quasi-Japanese culture which emphasizes the fact that they are not nice people. Lastly there are the "Rilkans", who I've also renamed, though I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with the new name I gave them. Like Azurins, they can pass for human, as they have scales only in certain areas that, ahem, are normally not visible. They essentially live a vagabond existence amidst the human flock, much like the Maenads (which I also changed to remove their visible "tell", though I left the name alone in their case), although they're a little more excited when they find another of themselves, as they do not have the option of interbreeding with humanity as the maenads do.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by Nerre » Thu Dec 04, 2014 3:14 pm

willpell wrote:Please. Pick. An. Alignment. (It must have exactly one neutral component.)
true neutral then. :)
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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by willpell » Thu Dec 04, 2014 3:19 pm

Nerre wrote:
willpell wrote:Please. Pick. An. Alignment. (It must have exactly one neutral component.)
true neutral then. :)
I said "exactly one"; True Neutral is effectively "Neutral Neutral", so it doesn't work.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by Nerre » Thu Dec 04, 2014 3:37 pm

Ah sorry. Then neutral good.
:zzz:

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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by willpell » Thu Dec 04, 2014 8:24 pm

Alright then, that's pretty different from what I had in mind, but let's see what I can come up with. It is my habit to build characters one level at a time, so we'll begin with a level 1 version of him that's just an Incarnate, and nowhere near playable yet, being greatly specialized in a build which hasn't yet become effective.

Name : Khrerrark (an infant throat's attempt at calling for a cleric, mistaken for his name)
Race : Yeenagh (Gnoll)
Class : Incarnate 1
ECL : 4
Align : Neutral Good
Affiliation: None
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You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
My long-neglected blog.

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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by spiderwrangler » Thu Dec 04, 2014 9:28 pm

Biological discussion ahead. Yes, I know that science loses out to story, but just a few comments/questions.
willpell wrote:But his tribe was one of those who "allow" their females to participate in raids along with the males (being, for one reason or another, confident that they won't turn their weapons upon the males who rule over them at the first opportunity; tribes which lack this confidence are certainly common enough);
In spotted hyena, the female is the larger and more dominant sex, while not the norm across hyena species, it could be an interesting hook for certain tribes or subgroups within the Yeenagh.
willpell wrote:(assuming of course that he was an albino at the time; it's possible that the shock of his postmortem birth destroyed his natural pigmentation.
There wouldn't be a biological cause for pigmentation being altered by birth, but if magics were at play (mother was stuck down by X spell, etc) that could play an interesting role in things.
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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by willpell » Thu Dec 04, 2014 10:12 pm

spiderwrangler wrote:In spotted hyena, the female is the larger and more dominant sex, while not the norm across hyena species, it could be an interesting hook for certain tribes or subgroups within the Yeenagh.
I am aware of this, although I didn't know it was only true of certain hyenas. In standard D&D canon, gnolls are one of the many matriarchal species of monsters (all of whom are of course Evil, because Gary Gygax either had deep emotional problems himself, or was simply extremely confident that his core audience all did), on the basis that the larger and more powerful females rule through brute force, while hoping that they will be chosen as consorts by the demon prince Yeenoghu. However, this doesn't mesh at all with the way I envision Whiteleaf; instead of the gnolls trying to curry favor with a demon (who is after all a completely different species from them, and a profoundly unnatural creature which the first gnolls ought to have found repulsive), I figured that the demon would impose his will upon them and shape them to his cruel preferences - and Yeenoghu isn't an incubus, his top priority in reformatting the gnolls to suit his wishes ought not to be making the entire species into his own personal harem. Instead, I figure that he would view the natural physical superiority of females as an insult to his own masculinity, and would indoctrinate males of this species he appreciates to act in a horrifyingly misogynistic way, using scare tactics and below-the-belt attacks to utterly traumatize and dominate their women. Thusly, the Yeenagh become a disturbing parody of human gender politics - imagine an entire nation of humans where the women are all bodybuilders and the men are scrawny 98-pound weaklings, but thanks to the expert tutelage of some serial killer who owns a harem of abused wives, they've all learned how to "neg" their women into uncertainty, gang up on them while isolating them from each other, mindscrew them into total insecurity until they actually crave mistreatment, and if all else fails threaten to kill their children in front of them. This is what the Yeenagh are like today; the women are bigger and stronger, but the men are meaner, and work together like gangsters in order to keep an objectively more powerful society too scared to defy them.
There wouldn't be a biological cause for pigmentation being altered by birth, but if magics were at play (mother was stuck down by X spell, etc) that could play an interesting role in things.
Having it be a spell would be too easy. You've never heard of the cliche of someone being "so scared that their hair turned white overnight"? While such a thing may not be possible in real-world science, it is the sort of thing that nonmagical science in a fantasy world might bend to permit, just because it resonates so well with the folklore that the fantasy seeks to emulate.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
My long-neglected blog.

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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by willpell » Tue Dec 09, 2014 3:57 pm

Alright, inspiration is not coming to me on the Barbarian sublevel I was going to make up for Khrerrark, so let's just advance him to Incarnate 2, we can do that much for now, and if necessary I will then give him a plain old Barbarian level. You get a +1 to an Attribute this level (creatures with 4 or more HD, or with any HD and more than +2 LA, miss out on attribute-ups, but fortunately you don't), and I'm putting it into Intelligence by default, just because this is the only Attribute whose primary function (providing skill points) cannot come from anything other than the raw score. If you find yourself inadequately strong, you can always get a Belt of Giant Strength, but a Headband of Intellect doesn't help you diversify your character by purchasing more skills, particularly out-of-class ones. It'll be four more levels before the actual modifier improves, but it'll have to do.

Name : Khrerrark (an infant throat's attempt at calling for a cleric, mistaken for his name)
Race : Yeenagh (Gnoll)
Class : Incarnate 2
ECL : 5
Align : Neutral Good
Affiliation: None
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Last edited by willpell on Tue Dec 16, 2014 8:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
My long-neglected blog.

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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by willpell » Tue Dec 16, 2014 8:27 pm

Okay, still not sure on more Barbarian goodness for Gnolls, so we'll stick with RAW for now. Barbarian levels are boring, so I'm giving him all three right out the gate; then I'll only need to do one more update before he'll be ready to rock and roll. Although there are enough changes between all three levels that I should probably do them separately.
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Note that while your Incarnate level didn't improve, incarnum-related class features partially account for your total character level, and Feats related to incarnum can be taken even at normal levels. Thusly you have the same soulmelds as before, but you have more e to invest in them and are allowed to put more into each one. Practiced Meldshaper has also been improving your meldshaper level with every previous non-Incarnate level you took; only after this level does it cease to affect you.
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Since Trap Sense is a dumb class feature, I am giving you a Barbarian substitution level after all, but it's one that comes from RAW, specifically from page 28 of the Planar Handbook. The text of the ability is included in case you lack the book.
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(Apparently I managed to hit the character limit, so as an easy way of trimming, I'm extracting the Practiced Meldshaper text and posting it just once, here.)
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You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
My long-neglected blog.

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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by Nerre » Wed Dec 17, 2014 8:38 am

Fascinating, looks pretty good already. :)
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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by willpell » Wed Dec 24, 2014 7:38 pm

Time to cap off this character and get playing, with what will apparently be a solo campaign, since I've heard nothing back from any of the other players (except maybe SpiderWrangler) indicating that they're still around. With the exception of barring a few soulmelds if you choose Good or Evil (there are no exclusives for Chaos and Law, a fact which bothers me a great deal) and affecting a few others' effects, with none of either set being part of Khrerrark's build, the choice of alignment doesn't actually matter until Incarnate level 3, which is when Incarnum Radiance comes online. So, at long last, you see what difference it makes that you chose to be Good rather than Chaotic (or even Evil; Lawful would require a different build since you couldn't be a Barbarian anymore).

Name : Khrerrark
Race : Yeenagh (Gnoll)
Class : Incarnate 3 / Barbarian 3
ECL : 8 (I apparently forgot to account for your LA buyoff at the appropriate time, so I'm just going to flat-out ditch the LA and not try to calculate how your XP total should differ from a level 8 character; the racial HD are enough of a drawback, without penalizing your ability to level up on schedule).
Align : Neutral Good
Affiliation: None
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You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
My long-neglected blog.

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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by spiderwrangler » Wed Dec 24, 2014 9:30 pm

Still around...
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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by Nerre » Fri Dec 26, 2014 2:00 pm

Ready when you are (and Spider if he still wants it).
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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by willpell » Thu Jan 01, 2015 3:27 pm

I've been unable to come up with a better idea than to start in media res, without explanation, with Kast in the middle of what he was intended to be doing in the course of "Where Dragons", if several members of the party hadn't thoroughly failed to cooperate. I'm not sure whether I should post in "Where Dragons" or start a new thread, given that the old thread was sort of founded on Quarg's character, who seems no longer to be with us.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
My long-neglected blog.

Nerre
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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by Nerre » Thu Jan 01, 2015 4:28 pm

I would call it finished, let a mod move it to the finished games section and only leave a link to it here. A new thread is the cleaner solution in my eyes.
Will Krerrark also start there or later in another plot/thread?
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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by willpell » Thu Jan 01, 2015 7:22 pm

Nerre wrote:I would call it finished, let a mod move it to the finished games section and only leave a link to it here. A new thread is the cleaner solution in my eyes.
Will Krerrark also start there or later in another plot/thread?
Krerrark and Kastrail, sitting in a [TBA], A-D-V-E-N-T-U-R-I-N-G.....
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
My long-neglected blog.

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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by Quarg » Sat Jan 03, 2015 9:45 am

Well, i never got an answer about if we're restarting at the same level...
Really...why are you reading this?

Eileen Ap'Fyretorr

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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by Nerre » Sat Jan 03, 2015 10:30 pm

what's a TBA?
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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by spiderwrangler » Sun Jan 04, 2015 6:54 am

Nerre wrote:what's a TBA?
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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by willpell » Sun Jan 04, 2015 7:30 am

Quarg wrote:Well, i never got an answer about if we're restarting at the same level...
We are remaining at the same level, but dropping any continuity from the previous game that you aren't especially attached to keeping. I did a lot of planning around your character which would be handy to preserve, but the old scene had stalled, so we're going to start the new scene with you already standing on the plot rails which you previously failed to step onto. Whether those rails go to the same destination or not, either way they will at least pass through the same terrain features in the short term, since that's what I have prepared for the moment.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
My long-neglected blog.

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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by Quarg » Sun Jan 04, 2015 1:53 pm

willpell wrote:
Quarg wrote:Well, i never got an answer about if we're restarting at the same level...
We are remaining at the same level, but dropping any continuity from the previous game that you aren't especially attached to keeping. I did a lot of planning around your character which would be handy to preserve, but the old scene had stalled, so we're going to start the new scene with you already standing on the plot rails which you previously failed to step onto. Whether those rails go to the same destination or not, either way they will at least pass through the same terrain features in the short term, since that's what I have prepared for the moment.
Well, then I think Eileen is a playable character...though I am curious what rails we failed to find ourselves on...
Really...why are you reading this?

Eileen Ap'Fyretorr

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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by willpell » Sun Jan 04, 2015 4:59 pm

Okay, I have work this week so I won't be long on time, but whenever I can manage it, I'll set up the new scene for Kast, Khrerrark and Eileen. (Pretend that you knew Khrerrark all along; a gnoll in the party would raise no more eyebrows than a ghost or a Koboldicorn.)
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
My long-neglected blog.

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Re: Recruitment Thread for Pell's D&D 3.5 Game

Post by Synch » Sun Jan 04, 2015 6:51 pm

I love how you're blaming us for not following your "plot rails".

Basically, if we went in the wrong direction and none of us were deliberately trying to be obstinate or deviate from the mission, then I'm afraid your rails were shit.

From what I took from what happened, we were (VERY slowly) meandering along until you lost all your stuff somewhere and called it quits. Then said its on again but we'd have to change everything after we spent a fuck-ton of time ironing everything out.

I think you've got a great world created, and you're great with detail and NPCs etc, but you forget to factor in dealing with people. You're not creating a world for a novel, you're creating a background for a game in which you play with other people.
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